Description

Groundwater and surface water management including water extraction, artificial recharge and underground water storage, reservoirs, dams, sewage water treatment and river management.

Category

Categorisation as a Feature, Event and/or Process.

  • Features are physical components of the disposal system and environment being assessed. Examples include waste packaging, backfill, surface soils. Features typically interact with one another via processes and in some cases events.
  • Events are dynamic interactions among features that occur over time periods that are short compared to the safety assessment timeframe such as a gas explosion or meteorite impact.
  • "Processes" are issues or dynamic interactions among features that generally occur over a significant proportion of the safety assessment timeframe and may occur over the whole of this timeframe. Events and processes may be coupled to one another (i.e. may influence one another).

The classification of a FEP as an event or process depends upon the assessment context, because the classification is undertaken with reference to an assessment timeframe. In this generic IFEP List, many IFEPs are classified as both Events and Processes; users will need to decide which of these classifications is relevant to their context and its timeframes.

  • Event
  • Process

Comments

The “Comments” field, when present, contains any additional explanation of the IFEP, beyond that implicit in the FEP's description and provided in the “Relevance to Performance and Safety” field. This additional explanation may include, where appropriate, the IFEPs characteristics, the circumstances under which it might be relevant and its relationship to other (especially similar) IFEPs.

Water management (this FEP 1.4.9) covers pumping of water from boreholes or the injection of water to boreholes for the purposes of managing groundwater resources, but does not cover the actual drilling of water wells. Drilling of water wells is considered under Drilling activities (FEP 1.4.5).

Relevance to Performance and Safety

The “Relevance to Performance and Safety” field contains an explanation of how the IFEP might influence the performance and safety of the disposal system under consideration through its impact on the evolution of the repository system and on the release, migration and/or uptake of repository-derived contaminants.

Water management has the potential to influence the performance and safety of a repository by: 1) affecting the flow of groundwater in and/or around a repository; 2) affecting the chemistry of the groundwater in and/or around a repository; 3) providing a pathway for organisms to be exposed to radionuclides and/or other contaminants originating in a repository; 4) affecting erosion and sedimentation (with a consequent impact on landforms); 5) affecting the processes by which radionuclides and/or other contaminants originating in a repository could be retarded or dispersed; and 5) affecting the nature of organisms and ecosystems that could be impacted by radionuclides and/or other contaminants originating in a repository. Groundwater abstraction could transport contaminated water from a repository or its environs to the biosphere. Even if contaminated water is not abstracted, groundwater heads could be drawn down, thereby affecting groundwater fluxes in and around a repository. Groundwater management may involve artificial recharge, which could introduce fresh, oxidising water to depth near a repository. Such recharge could also affect groundwater head gradients and ground fluxes in and around a repository. Surface water management could include the construction of reservoirs and water courses, both to provide water resources and to prevent or mitigate the chances for flooding. Vegetation and land uses in catchments might be managed to control storage and runoff rates in the near-surface. The changes in hydrology that could accompany management of surface water could influence erosion and sedimentation. These processes, combined with certain water management measures themselves (e.g. straightening of meandering rivers, construction of reservoirs) have the potential to change landforms. Ecosystems could be influenced by the measures taken to manage water resources. For example, construction of a reservoir may lead to the development of wetland habitats where none existed previously. Thus, water management could affect the nature of organisms that could be impacted by radionuclides and / or other contaminants. The processes by which radionuclides and / or other contaminants could be retarded or dispersed in the near surface will be affected by potential changes in water drainage patterns/volumes, landforms, the nature of soils / sediments, exposures of rock and ecosystems.

2000 List

A reference to the related FEP(s) within the 2000 NEA IFEP List.

1.4.07

Related References